Weekly Dealer Car Enquiries – Sunday May 10

In this series, which we hope to bring to you on a regular basis, we’ll be detailing some of the key numbers and trends that we’re seeing in terms of dealer connections made through our site.

As this data is considered somewhat representative of broader industry activity, and serves as one of the more insightful leading indicators for potential car sales, we hope it will fulfil a few purposes for our broad audience. First, to document not just how we’re performing as business, but how dealers and the wider market stand to perform, so you don’t have to wait til that next set of official sales data.

Without further ado, here’s what happened over the last week.

Total new car enquiries

In the week ending Sunday, May 10, there were a total of 930 quote requests from prospective new car buyers across the PriceMyCar platform.

We’ve noticed a significant upturn in terms of inbound queries coming from a wide range of customers, which is at complete odds with just a few weeks ago. The week’s performance also represented a 24.6% improvement relative the week ending May 3, 2020.

Although dealer connections have yet to translate into broader sales growth for the industry – take last month’s shocking fall in new car sales as one example – the turnaround in consumer sentiment would suggest that things are starting to look somewhat more positive. Overall PriceMyCar enquiries are now back around similar levels before the economic crisis took hold.

With restrictions now loosened in cities across the country, and the Australian government also outlining its plans to reopen the economy in a series of phases, here’s hoping that the employment situation has also bottomed. We will receive some insight into that metric this week.

New car interest by brand

The market’s favourite series of vehicles were back in demand, helping prompt growth in the number of introductions coming through. This meant that buying interest in the likes of Mazda, Ford, Toyota, Mitsubishi and Hyundai recorded significant week-on-week gains.

In fact, there was an increase in buying interest for the overwhelming majority of brands, with only a handful of makes otherwise seeing a slip in enquiries.

What’s particularly intriguing is that Mazda has, for the second week running, not just been the most-investigated car brand among our members, but there was a huge increase in volume in this most-recent week ending May 10, 2020. This comes despite a well-documented shift in some of its models’ prices, so perhaps Australian motorists are hoping they may be able to negotiate a bargain for the company’s latest models.

Elsewhere, Subaru and Volvo are two brands that are showing some promising growth. While neither have regularly found themselves selling in bulk volume, prospective new car buyers appear to be placing them ahead of the likes of Nissan and the soon-to-be-exiting Holden.

To get FREE access to instant pricing on just about every new car make and model, plus guaranteed discounts, sign up today